


Day 30. Roasted

by Munnin



Series: Fictober [30]
Category: Star Wars: Clone Wars (2003) - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Mentions of Order 66
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-08-09 12:38:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16450130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Munnin/pseuds/Munnin
Summary: The coming of outlanders shifts the flow of the future to a new path.





	Day 30. Roasted

**Author's Note:**

> If you’re just joining in, I urge you to read the [whole series](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1145777) from the beginning. Some of these stories read fine alone but they’re all part of a larger interwoven plot.

I stood on top of a stone crag, silhouetted against the low sun as they came over the dune. 

The two clones wore armour pieces in a motley mess. One wore a chest and backplate, shirt sleeves rolled up to show bare, scarred arms. A phase two bucket hid his face, mismatching greaves over heavy boots. All was painted in a green camouflage pattern that stood out badly against the red sand. The other wore a long dark jacket with only the faceplate of a phase one helmet, cut back to form a mask. I felt no malice from them. The Force moved smoothly around them, with none of the darkness of a being seeking violence. Both carried weapons but holstered, not in their hands. 

The figure who walked ahead of them interested me more. 

Even in a baggy flight-suit, it was easy to see the being within was slender and short, with the curves of a young girl. 

She wore a scarf and veil tight around her head. All she allowed to show of her face was her eyes. Amber red, the colour of a fire season sunset. A hard shade to forget. 

I had seen those eyes before. First on Ilum as she knelt at Master Ralin’s side. And then again when I had left the temple for the last time. 

The Twi'lek youngling Fasima. 

I had bowled her over in my haste to leave the Council Chamber, knocking her down in the hallway. I had helped her up with my ghost hand and for a moment she had flinched. Not from me. She had recoiled from the fire and the blood. She had felt, as I had, the death of the Jedi Order. 

And now she stood before me, challenge on her lips and defiance in her eyes. 

She pulled the veil down. “Master. I have come to complete my training.” 

It took a moment for her words to sink in. I had not spoken Basic in four years. I had stopped thinking or dreaming in the language. It was no longer my mother tongue. 

“No master,” I answered, feeling the words creak with the rust of disuse. “No Jedi.”

The bare-armed clone step forward. He took his twin blasters from their holsters and set them on the sand, stepping away from them as he tipped his helmet off. 

I felt myself light up with the warmth of recognition. 

Gel.

I dropped down from the rock to meet him, clasping arms in the salute of his people. 

“It’s been a long time, General,” he said with a smile and I saw a scar on his temple. One I was sure was not there when we’d parted. He saw me looking and nodded, tapping the mark. “It’s okay, someone got it out in time. Before-”

I felt the swirl of sickness inside him – shame and grief and regret chewing at his insides. There was a stain on his honour, even if it wasn’t on his own hands. 

I clasped the back of his neck and pressed our foreheads together. A show of greeting and trust. Gel was welcome here. He was trusted as a brother. The watching warriors would see and know, whatever else happened, Gel was not an enemy. 

Gel leant into the touch, sighing deeply. “I’m glad we found you.” He wanted forgiveness but couldn’t ask it. It wasn’t for him to ask. “Some of the kids got away, before-” it choked him even to say it, “before the Purge. We- me and some others, we’ve been helping them find places. Places to be safe.”

He nodded to the other clone who made no move to remove his mask or offer his name. He had a stillness to him, both in his person and his presence in the Force. Like a windless day when the sea was like glass. It was unusual. I’d seen something like it in Fordo but not to this extent.

Gel went on. “Fasima here… she’s not adjusting well. She needs… someone to guide her. Somewhere safe, away from-” 

Gel was careful in his words but I felt the implication. She was wild, angry, undisciplined. She would draw attention. She would endanger others. If any youngling child was to live in the age after the Purge, it would have to be quietly and in secret. 

A child like Fasima would not be quiet or secret. 

I had seen it on Ilum and again at the Temple. The way others looked at her. As I had noticed the way others had looked at me. 

I could see why the Jedi might fear her. Those eyes, the colour of Sith from the stories. How many Jedi had ever seen a Sith in person and lived to speak of it? Master Obi-Wan maybe. But few others, surely.

Such were the demons in the dark. The stories meant to scare younglings into staying on the path. So abstract even the Council barely believed in them.

And so, in their arrogance, the Jedi had refused to believe something so terrible could creep into their midst and they'd never see it. 

The monsters in the stories didn’t have fair faces or soft voices. The monsters in the stories looked different to everyone else. They had glowing eyes or suffered fits. Or some other outward sign that would be easy to point out. 

Fear, judgement, superstition. And children like this one had suffered. Just as I had when I suffered my tribulations. 

I raised my spear high, the kyber at its tip catching the dying light and reflecting it. I tapped the butt twice against the stone, hearing the sound echoed back to me. And then silence. 

The warriors of the Iron Trees had left us to our conference. 

***

We sat close to where they landed their ship, roasting a stone snake over a small fire. 

Gel spoke as we ate, telling me everything he knew about what had happened. 

About the organic chips implanted in the clones. About the order that activated it. About how the clone army had turned on their Jedi leaders, and how they’d been without mercy. 

He’d been far away from the action, being transported with a shipment of equipment to one of outer-rim campaigns when the order came in. No Jedi. No-one to turn on.

By the time they’d landed on the planet, it was all over. The Jedi and troopers had all but wiped each other out. There was one trooper left, clutching his bleeding scalp and kneeling over the body of a fallen padawan commander. 

He had jumped Gel as soon as Gel had come too near, gouging at Gel’s temple with a vibroblade. 

It was then Gel came to his senses. 

They had freed those they came across, from the chip and the orders. But not from the guilt. World after world, battle after battle, reports came in of mission success. Of eliminated Jedi. 

And then the holo-news - the burning Jedi Temple, Supreme Chancellor Palpatine’s ascent to Emperor. The war ended abruptly, the Separatist threat melting away. 

As Gel spoke, I felt the shape of the galaxy come back to me. The worlds beyond the borders of this world. The duty to care for it that I had put aside when I smashed my sabre. I had known only parts of the story – the parts I had seen in my visions. The Temple on fire, the clones turning on the Jedi. A Sith at the centre of it all.

But I had never foreseen just how central the Sith had been. Or how closely with the Jedi he had worked, unseen. Even I had been blind to that. 

It sickened me to think how utterly the galaxy had been played. 

I forced myself to focus on the here and now. On what could be done, rather than on a past that could not be changed. 

The girl sat close to the silent trooper who had put aside his mask to eat. I didn’t recognise him, or the skin paint tattoo that marked lines down the side of his face. But I did recognise the scar at the hollow of his throat, the damage it must have done. It explained his silence but his stillness was something else, something different. 

The girl Fasima seemed to sense it too, drawn to his stillness to calm her own storm. She leant against him as the night air cooled, trusting at his side. 

It was then it occurred to me that the scarf she wore tight around her head didn’t leave enough room for her lekku. 

It highlighted instead the absence of them.

I had only a limited understanding of the nature of a Twi'lek’s lekku, and that from Aayla Secura of the Jedi Order. Sensory organs - subtler and more sensitive than any other part of their bodies. I understood the loss of them was more traumatic than the loss of a simple limb. 

I waited till the twin stars were born again on the horizon before summoning the child. “Walk with me.” 

I picked a path back to the edges of the Iron Tree forest, far from the tribe’s camp but within the embrace of the trees. 

She looked so small, picking her way gracelessly through the undergrowth. A child, lost in a galaxy she no longer understood. An orphan of the Order. And by her mutilation, one who had suffered in the aftermath. 

She sensed me watching her, widening her stance, holding her ground. "I'm not a child. I saw what you saw. The fire in the Temple. The blood on the floor. I saved some of them, you know. The other padawans. I made them listen to me so they’d run away."

“You saw.”

“Yes.” She jutted out her chin. “When I touched your ghost hand. I can sometimes… see inside people’s heads.”

I cocked my head. "A dangerous gift."

"I don't do it on purpose. Unless I have to," she grumbled. "It's not my fault. Master Aeolus tried to teach me to control it."

"No, he didn't," I corrected. What she'd said was not a lie. It was the truth as she'd been taught to see it. "He taught you to hide it. So you wouldn’t frighten people. He taught you to supress yourself for the comfort of others."

Her eyes went wide, then thoughtful. 

I knew what she was feeling - the lifting of the spell.

"Yes." She looked straight at me. "Yes. They were afraid of me. But you are not afraid."

"Fear has its uses,” I answered her, matter-of-factly. “I have no use of it now." 

"Teach me how to control my gift," she insisted, jutting her chin again.

"No," I answered, planting my spear in the soil.

"Why not?” she demanded. “Why else would they bring me here? You're meant to teach me! Gel said you would! That’s the Jedi way."

"I'm not a Jedi."

"Then you're a Sith." She reached for the sabre at her hip, lighting the blade. The blue blade was the wrong colour for her. The light clashed as it reflected off her eyes and skin.

"That sabre isn't yours," I stated, arms crossed.

I could feel the spark, like flint on ore. I had struck her deeply and fire bloomed inside her - shame and rage and confusion. 

"It's mine now." She threw herself towards me, striking wildly.

I stepped aside, letting her blow miss me. She had no great skill and even less control. I had no need to parry, I simple stayed out of the line of her blade.

"No. It is not," I stated clearly, my voice level as she spent her energy in wild, careless swings. "That crystal never sung your name. It will never answer your call. The sabre is as dead in your hand as a blaster."

She redoubled her attack, screaming in impotent rage as over and over the blade found nothing but air.

Tired of this game, I turned my back on her.

As she charged at me I reached for my spear and swept the shaft across her wrist, and then her knees. The first blow knocked the sabre from her hand sending it bouncing off the trunk of an iron tree to land at my feet. The second blow landed her on her back. 

She used the Force to yank the sabre back but I put my foot on it, feeling only token resistance. 

“The sabre does not obey you because it was not meant for you,” I repeated, levelling my crystal tipped spear for her to see. “The crystal does not sing your name. And so you cannot use it.”

“It’s mine now!”

“Why? Because you took it from another? A friend, a fallen master? That doesn’t make it yours.” I scooped the sabre hilt up with my ghost hand and clipped it to my belt. “You will not use it again. Not until you have built your own.”

She looked up at me from the flat of her back, anger in her fire-marked eyes. “How? How can I build my own? You said you won’t train me.”

“I said I wouldn’t teach you to control your gifts,” I pointed out. “And I won’t. I will teach you how to use them.” 

I held my flesh hand out to pull her up. “I am not a Jedi. And I will not teach you to be a Jedi. Nor am I Sith. I am Djarrah of the Iron Trees. If the tribe accept you, I will teach you to live in balance with the Force and with yourself. Who you chose to be after that, is up to you.”

***

To be continued…

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I know I left you hanging but I promise, Djarrah's story will continue in late December when I start posting my new story challenge. 
> 
> Josh, I owe you big.


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